B.C. politics

The International Monetary Fund has stated that Canada's massive subsidization of the fossil fuel industry includes, in relation to natural gas, about $440 million in producer support and $360 million in untaxed externalities. The Tyeereports, "Canada provides more subsidies to petroleum as a proportion of government revenue than any developed nation on Earth besides the United States and Luxembourg."

Don't

There is some discussion in Nova Scotia about the possibility of the government introducing a carbon tax in the next budget. In this blog post I will introduce the context within which these discussions are taking place, and make reference to other blog posts in this forum that provide insights into how the province might best approach a carbon tax policy.

2015 marks the sixth year of B.C.'s recovery from the recession. But it's been a slow and largely jobless recovery in B.C.

1. B.C. needs 93,000 more jobs to return to our pre-recession employment rate (the proportion of working-age British Columbians who have jobs).

Only 71.2 per cent of working-age British Columbians have jobs today. This is practically the same share of workers with jobs as when the BC Jobs Plan was launched, and has barely improved since the recession.

In other words, the new jobs created in B.C. since 2009 have just kept up with population growth without replacing (or recovering) the jobs lost during the recession.

The existence of poverty in British Columbia is a violation of human rights. There is not only a moral duty to eradicate poverty but also a legal obligation under international human rights law. Just before the holidays, December 10 was International Human Rights Day but we have little to celebrate here in B.C.

A human rights approach to poverty is based on a fundamental respect for human dignity as opposed to a charitable approach, which, let's be honest, situates poor people as pitiful. A human rights framework recognizes people in poverty as rights-bearers entitled to assert legal claims rather than being passive recipients of charitable aid.

The B.C. Finance Ministry has produced a report much more critical of Partnerships BC and its activities around public-private partnerships (P3s) than might have been expected by a province so committed to the practice. It raises issues of conflict of interest, dubious practices and questionable assumptions in the multi-billion-dollar program. The story has received no media coverage.

While it is likely the province will continue to push P3s with undiminished enthusiasm for large projects, the report and surrounding documents acknowledge many of the criticisms of P3s raised by other groups including both the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the B.C. Construction Association.

Last month Ontario's auditor general issued her annual report. One of her targets was Ontario's use of public-private partnerships to build public infrastructure. As the Toronto Star put it, "Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has taken a wrecking ball to the (Ontario) Liberals' use of private money to bankroll new hospitals and transit…"

Lysyk's report found that the use of public-private partnerships (P3s) had cost Ontarians $8 billion more than they would have paid if the projects had been financed with traditional public funding.

The latest poverty statistics were released by Statistics Canada last Wednesday, and the data once again shows that British Columbia has one of the highest poverty rates in Canada.

Using the Low Income Cut-Off – After Tax (LICO-AT) as the poverty line, 1 in 10 British Columbians are living in poverty. That's 469,000 people struggling to make ends meet. In relation to the rest of the country, B.C. is tied third with Quebec after Ontario and Manitoba.

This week, after Premier Christy Clark announced the approval of the controversial Site C dam, the Council of Canadians expressed its indignation over the B.C. government's environmental short-sightedness.

BC Hydro would be building its third dam on the Peace River, flooding 5,550 hectares of land over an 83-kilometre stretch of valley. Site C would flood 78 First Nations heritage sites, including burial grounds and places of cultural and spiritual significance.

The human rights process starts with the filing of a complaint of discrimination. In B.C., the complaint is filed with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. Filing an effective complaint requires a good deal of time and effort. It can be hard to devote that time and effort if, for example, someone has been fired because of discrimination and is searching as hard as they can to find another job. In short, the complaints process can be useful, but dealing with discrimination after it has occurred is far from easy.